


Burn Together

by blue_wonderer, wonderingtheblue (blue_wonderer)



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Day One: Chronos/Savitar, Flashwave Week 2018, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 00:45:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14989073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_wonderer/pseuds/blue_wonderer, https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_wonderer/pseuds/wonderingtheblue
Summary: Whereas Savitar chases after a blissful moment of stillness without fear of ending, Chronos is chasing after a memory of fire.Chronos is sent to assassinate Savitar.





	Burn Together

“I know you, don’t I?” The Future asks of Time. 

Time, the hunter called Chronos, his would-be executioner blinks away the last vestiges of unconsciousness to turn his hollowed-out gaze on him. 

“Would hope so,” Chronos grunts as he looks away to take stock of his situation. There’s not much to look at, just brick walls and looming racks and odd-looking tools, everything made eerie by the blue glow of Savitar’s suit resting on standby in the middle of the room. “Just tried to kill you.” 

“Yes, that was fun,” sneers the Future who calls himself Savitar. He reaches up, fingers absently brushing his shoulder. The burn from earlier is healed already but he feels the memory of it knitted in his skin, tender against the fabric of his shirt. “Caught me by surprise.” 

“Only way to fight a speedster,” Chronos shrugs. “That and cold.” 

“And that’s not really your _schtick_ , is it?” Savitar says. “That’s your partner. Snart. Captain Cold.” 

A reaction, there and gone, as fleeting as a spark. A play of muscles in his jaw, the whitening of knuckles, and then blankness again. 

“Had a falling out, then?” Savitar clicks his tongue. “Shame.” 

“I’m gonna kill him,” Chronos says, matter-of-fact as he sits up in the bare cot Savitar had thrown him on. Savitar is close to the cot, sitting backwards in a chair, his arms folded over the back, his chin resting nonchalantly on his forearms. “Before this is all over.”

Chronos reaches to the back of his head and brings his fingers down. It’s been almost half an hour, but the wound is still weeping a bright red. Chronos doesn’t spare a grunt, doesn’t deign it worthy of even a wince, he just wipes the blood on the mattress. He still doesn’t look up, like Savitar is not a threat, like he’s not the instrument that made Chronos bleed. 

Savitar doesn’t like that.

“Where’s my suit?” Chronos asks. Savitar nods to the corner of the room, where the suit sits like an empty husk, its intimidating helmet beside it. Savitar had liked the suit, had stripped it off and pulled it apart and put it back together, discovered pieces of technology sewn into it from across all of time. 

Stripped to a tank top and his underwear, Savitar had hoped that without the suit Chronos would seem more vulnerable, more human. But even without the suit he seems to take up half the room with his broad shoulders and his scars and his dead, dead eyes. It’s the eyes, Savitar decides. A window to an anesthetized soul beneath, a soul truly unafraid of stillness, of silence, of death. It’s the absence that seems to occupy a space bigger than the matter of the man. 

(It’s not the same for Savitar’s own suit. Without it, he’s closer to being _him_ , to being the Past. The suit makes him the god of motion. Without it, he’s just another abomination who doesn’t want to die.) 

Chronos examines his arms and legs, shifting them experimentally, hesitantly, a man used to looking down and finding shackles. “Why didn’t you tie me up? I’m still supposed to kill you.” 

“You’d die before you started.” Savitar says, confident. Now that he knew Chronos was coming for him, there wasn’t much Chronos could do against him. He’d outrun Death this long and he’d continue to do so, even if the gap was starting to close. “Why’d you come after me, anyway? Seems to be an escalation from knocking over ATMs.” 

Chronos doesn’t respond, doesn’t look up. Just stares silently at his own hands. Savitar closes his eyes, taps into the Past, peeks into _his_ memories. 

He hates doing it, even though it keeps him three steps ahead, even though it keeps him alive. He hates remembering that he was once _Barry_. 

“Time Masters,” he murmurs. “That’s right, I’d almost forgotten about them. You’ve become their dog.” Savitar must have finally blipped on their radar, and no matter how fucked up the Time Masters were, they wouldn’t want someone like Savitar interfering with the Flash’s so-called "destiny".

Chronos remains impassive to the verbal barb. White knuckles flash again, forearm muscles flex, and then whatever flickering flame raised its head behind Chronos’s expression sputters into smoke. 

Savitar wonders what it’s like, to be motionless and blank like that. To have the _live live live live please I want to live_ scorching through him be muted for half a moment. 

Perhaps it’s that, or just the need to get Chronos to look at him, that has him moving. He kicks away the chair, takes a half step forward until his legs brush the edge of the cot. He looms over Chronos, so close he thinks he can feel body heat seep through his clothes. But Chronos does not seem to acknowledge him, doesn’t seem to be afraid of him. He’s Savitar, not Barry Allen. He could pull out Chronos’s organs one by one. He could snap the hunter’s neck quicker than thought. And he wouldn’t hesitate, not like Barry would. Savitar hasn’t hesitated in a long time. To hesitate is to stop, and he won’t ever stop. 

He can’t.

Savitar bends a knee to the cot, the springs creaking under his weight. He places one hand on Chronos’s broad shoulder and swings his left leg until he’s straddling Chronos’s hips. 

“Can’t help but notice that there’s not much _heat_ in Heatwave any more. They must have done a number on you, dug out all of your useless bits and turned the rest to mush. Though, if memory serves, there wasn’t much to take out to begin with.” 

Chronos’s eyes finally glare into Savitar and he shivers to have the attention on him. Savitar smiles with twisted delight, a slow slash across his face, feeling the pull of his facial scars fight against the movement. He lowers himself slowly onto Chronos’s lap, his groin flush against a hard stomach. He drops his hands over Chronos’s arms, fingertips bumping over the strange texture of scarred skin. 

Savitar tilts his head. “Is Mick Rory still even in there?” 

Chronos gives him a slow blink and turns away again. “No,” he grunts. “Nothing but them.” 

Savitar can taste the lie, he wonders if Chronos can taste it, too, or if it’s something he doesn’t even know about himself. 

Savitar knows. Savitar knows that you can dig in and claw at yourself until you’re nothing but rawness and pain. You can change your name, change your face, change your speed and still _and still_ there will always be the Past. There will always be him. 

There will always be the thing you can’t outrun. 

Except Chronos isn’t trying to outrun anything. He’s stillness to Savitar’s motion, he’s death to life. He’s Time, old and endless. Savitar is the Future, always racing ahead, never stopping never waiting never-- 

Just once, this one time, it might be nice to feel some of that stillness and not be afraid of it. 

He runs his fingers back up scarred arms, up strong shoulders, curls them around Chronos’s neck. Drying blood flakes on his hands. Even now Chronos doesn’t fight. He’s either decided that Savitar has no intention to kill him, or he’s decided that this is a death he cannot fight against. 

Savitar would fight, if it were him, if something got that close to his throat. He’d fight brutally, and lethally. And yet he feels like Chronos is the braver of the two of them. 

“Look at me?” Savitar asks, because it’s all he wants. He wants to be seen, wants to be noticed. He just wants to _be_. 

Storm-like eyes the color of the Time Vortex bore into his own. And it’s probably because he’s Future and Chronos is Time and these universal properties are woven in their molecules, connecting them together, that Savitar is able to look into Chronos and see and experience _as_ Chronos for a fraction of a millisecond. 

He’s a speedster. A fraction of a millisecond is a small eternity. 

He feels Chronos’s desire, an aching hunger for heat and life, a longing to fathom something other than blankness, something other than pain and the numbness of cold anger. Savitar feels his own body in Chronos’s lap, feels the trickle of need pool in his belly and knows it’s the first real thing, free and pure from torture and torment, Chronos has felt in an age. He feels the ghost of his own hands against Chronos’s skin, feels the heat and how Chronos both craves and fears a simple touch. He sees a long-ago memory of the unadulterated glow of a fire resurface in Chronos’s broken mind as he remembers his love for it. 

Chronos lifts his hand to Savitar’s cheek, strokes a thumb across his lips, skin catching on the corner of his mouth before tracing the outline of his scar up his jaw, past his ear, and beneath his eye. 

A lust for something other than sustenance, for something other than revenge, glimmers to life. Whereas Savitar chases after a blissful moment of stillness without fear of ending, Chronos is chasing after a memory of fire. 

Savitar leans in, presses his mouth against Chronos’s, and together they burn. 

**end.**

**Author's Note:**

> @wonderingtheblue on Tumblr! :)


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